Morning Buddies #3

By Seth Kabala

Based on how much of it boys eat, breakfast cereal should be declared a separate food group. Nutritious? Let’s assume the jury is forever being tampered with.

I remember my friend Nick downing four, five, six bowls at a time. This created a perpetual state of shortage in his house, even more so when I would stay over, but his parents realized that cereal is a bonding agent for boys, and never said a word.

I don’t get up early enough most days to eat cereal, but I’ve managed to contain my resentment toward my family to the occasional dirty look at seeing a bowl in which is residual milk and some kind of intended-for-eating-from-a-tube-in-space cereal residue.

Nonetheless, I smiled when Will, upon seeing that there was more Reese’s Puffs left than he’d thought, said, “I can’t believe there’s so much of this cereal left. Rock the world!”

I jumped into journalist mode and asked him to confirm what he’d said, but he did the face-down, embarrassed look, nuance of pride present, but not enough to overcome being put on the spot.

Oh, well. I felt confident enough that he said it to reproduce it here. For it’s true. Cereal does “[r]ock the world.”

At 30, will it ever rock me out of bed earlier? We’ll see. If it helps me muster the enthusiasm of a five-year-old, I’ll have to try.

Said or didn’t say, his enthusiasm stemmed from a place we wouldn’t normally think was deserving, adding wattage to an otherwise dim activity.